WINDHAM, Conn. (AP) - Until recently, Julie Amero says, she lived the quiet life of a small-town substitute teacher, with little knowledge of computers and even less about porn.
Now she is in the middle of a criminal case that hinges on the intricacies of both, and it could put her behind bars for up to 40 years.
She was convicted last month of exposing seventh-grade students to pornography on her classroom computer. She contended the images were inadvertently thrust onto the screen by pornographers' unseen spyware and adware programs.
Several students testified that they saw pictures of naked men and women, including at least one image a couple having oral sex.
Prosecutor David Smith contended at Amero's three-day trial that she actually clicked on graphic Web sites.
The defense argued that the images were caused by adware and spyware - programs that are often secretly planted on computers by Internet businesses to track users' browsing habits. They can generate pop-up ads - in some cases, pornographic ones.
"What is extraordinary is the prosecution admitted there was no search made for spyware - an incredible blunder akin to not checking for fingerprints at a crime scene," Alex Eckelberry, president of a Florida software company, wrote recently in the local newspaper. "When a pop-up occurs on a computer, it will get shown as a visited Web site, and no 'physical click' is necessary."
Smith, the prosecutor, would not say what he plans to recommend when Amero is sentenced March 2. John Newsone, a defense attorney in Norwich familiar with the case, said Amero might be spared prison or face perhaps a year to 18 months.
Principal Scott Fain said the computer lacked the latest firewall protection because a vendor's bill had gone unpaid. "I was shocked to see what made it through," he said.
story via Unknown News
~Diederik can't figure it out either: "I haven't had an unwanted popup for years using decent software. People who know so little of computers that they do have them, and people who dont know how to kill a "popup hell" when it occurs, should burn in hell. Poor little souls being exposed to oral copulation. All they wanted is hair styles. I also say: what's with people using MIE? Even tho it now has tabs, it still is damn slow and overrules user behavior wherever it is most annoying. And what's this order-from-above not to close the terminal "under any circumstance"? Load of crap if you ask me. You can at all times close off the monitor, but apparently people think that's 1 button for the entire "computer". My my what a world. D."
>from Jan 14 on Spitting Image Teacher Faces 40 Years for Porn in Classroom, Blames Adware
Posted by Stubbornson at February 24, 2007 04:12 PM